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CBS newsmen recall deadly "Trojan horse" used by apartheid regime

The apartheid regime
Nelson Mandela fought to overturn often resorted to violent extremes to protect
its power.

A CBS News report nearly
three decades ago exposed one brutal government tactic, leading to the prompt
expulsion of correspondent Allen Pizzey
and two other CBS News employees.

The report provoked outrage around the world. Pizzey looks back now on
the "Trojan horse."

The white South African regime often
accused the foreign media of instigating the violence that was filmed when I
was reporting from the country in 1985.

But on Oct. 15 of that year, two CBS
News camera crews would capture a police operation that no one except the
perpetrators could possibly have known about in advance.

When cameraman Chris Everson and
soundman Nick della Casa arrived in Thornton Road in a mixed-race suburb
outside Cape Town, there was no more violence than usual. But it would escalate
into an event that many said did more damage to the South African regime's
international image than all the other coverage combined.

"There was a bunch of kids
standing on the street corner, probably about 30 strong. Clearly there had been
some incidents already. There were signs that vehicles had been stoned. There was glass on the streets. And not
wanting to be part of the scene, we set ourselves well back from it," Everson
said.

Just up the road but out of sight, CBS
cameraman Wim de Vos and sound recordist Anton van der Merwe -- no strangers to
police harassment -- arrived at the scene.

"It wasn't violent at that point
when I arrived but I could see the rocks in their hands,” de Vos said. “I
wasn't that far away from them and I thought, 'Uh-oh, there comes trouble.' "

Everson had the same gut feeling.

"It was a flatbed vehicle with
boxes on the back. And I filmed the truck as it went down the road away from
me, toward the group of kids on the corner," he said.

Then the truck turned around and came
back.

"As it approached the kids, three
or four stones hit the windscreen," Everson said.

"And as they did so, there were
several policemen in the back of the truck hiding in boxes. And they popped up,” de Vos said.

One stunned youngster froze and
watched the horror unfold.

Back in 1985, we had had no idea that the
police had labeled their operation "Ghost Vehicle." When I wrote the story that day, I
called it a deadly Trojan horse.

Three kids were killed -- the youngest
was 11 years old -- and 12 were injured, among them two children who were hit
in their own homes.

"The strange thing was, you know,
at that time we didn't even realize the
importance of what we had just photographed," Everson said.

And neither did the police. When they finally forced the camera crews to
leave the area, they failed to
confiscate the videotapes -- and the damage was done.

"Of course it was one of those very
ugly, very ugly events that did us a lot of harm," said Roleof “Pik” Botha, who was
South Africa’s foreign minister at the time.

“It was extremely harmful for us in
foreign affairs because that increased the negative reaction overseas and effected an expanding economic sanctions against
South Africa," he said.

Worldwide condemnation of South Africa
was almost immediate and so was the white government's reaction.

Within days of the shooting, the state
of emergency was expanded and journalists were prohibited from filming any
incident of police violence under the threat of 10 years of imprisonment.

"What was new about this event was that
there was a camera there,” Everson said. ”These events, these killings, this
police brutality -- this happened all the time in South Africa."

Thornton Road today is a far cry from
what it was like 28 ago, except for a steel memorial -- a grim reminder of the
day three young South Africans were gunned down from that deadly Trojan horse.